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1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
by Authors:
Charles C. Mann
Hardcover Description: 1491 is not so much the story of a year, as of what that year stands for: the long-debated (and often-dismissed) question of what human civilization in the Americas was like before the Europeans crashed the party. The history books most Americans were (and still are) raised on describe the continents before Columbus as a vast, underused territory, sparsely populated by primitives whose cultures would inevitably bow before the advanced technologies of the Europeans. For decades, though, among the archaeologists, anthropologists, paleolinguists, and others whose discoveries Charles C. Mann brings together in 1491, different stories have been emerging. Among the revelations: the first Americans may not have come over the Bering land bridge around 12,000 B.C. but by boat along the Pacific coast 10 or even 20 thousand years earlier; the Americas were a far more urban, more populated, and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even "timeless" natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention.
Mann is well aware that much of the history he relates is necessarily speculative, the product of pot-shard interpretation and precise scientific measurements that often end up being radically revised in later decades. But the most compelling of his eye-opening revisionist stories are among the best-founded: the stories of early American-European contact. To many of those who were there, the earliest encounters felt more like a meeting of equals than one of natural domination. And those who came later and found an emptied landscape that seemed ripe for the taking, Mann argues convincingly, encountered not the natural and unchanging state of the native American, but the evidence of a sudden calamity: the ravages of what was likely the greatest epidemic in human history, the smallpox and other diseases introduced inadvertently by Europeans to a population without immunity, which swept through the Americas faster than the explorers who brought it, and left behind for their discovery a land that held only a shadow of the thriving cultures that it had sustained for centuries before. --Tom Nissley
A 1491 Timeline
Europe and Asia
Dates
The Americas
25000-35000 B.C.
Time of paleo-Indian migration to Americas from Siberia, according to genetic evidence. Groups likely traveled across the Pacific in boats.
Wheat and barley grown from wild ancestors in Sumer.
6000
5000
In what many scientists regard as humankind's first and greatest feat of genetic engineering, Indians in southern Mexico systematically breed maize (corn) from dissimilar ancestor species.
First cities established in Sumer.
4000
3000
The Americas' first urban complex, in coastal Peru, of at least 30 closely packed cities, each centered around large pyramid-like structures
Great Pyramid at Giza
2650
32
First clear evidence of Olmec use of zero--an invention, widely described as the most important mathematical discovery ever made, which did not occur in Eurasia until about 600 A.D., in India (zero was not introduced to Europe until the 1200s and not widely used until the 1700s)
800-840 A.D.
Sudden collapse of most central Maya cities in the face of severe drought and lengthy war
Vikings briefly establish first European settlements in North America.
1000
Reconstruction of Cahokia, c. 1250 A.D.*
Abrupt rise of Cahokia, near modern St. Louis, the largest city north of the Rio Grande. Population estimates vary from at least 15,000 to 100,000.
Black Death devastates Europe.
1347-1351
1398
Birth of Tlacaélel, the brilliant Mexican strategist behind the Triple Alliance (also known as the Aztec empire), which within decades controls central Mexico, then the most densely settled place on Earth.
The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.
1492
The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.
Syphilis apparently brought to Europe by Columbus's returning crew.
1493
Ferdinand Magellan departs from Spain on around-the-world voyage.
1519
Sixteenth-century Mexica drawing of the effects of smallpox**
Cortes driven from Tenochtitlán, capital of the Triple Alliance, and then gains victory as smallpox, a European disease never before seen in the Americas, kills at least one of three in the empire.
1525-1533
The smallpox epidemic sweeps into Peru, killing as much as half the population of the Inka empire and opening the door to conquest by Spanish forces led by Pizarro.
1617
Huge areas of New England nearly depopulated by epidemic brought by shipwrecked French sailors.
English Pilgrims arrive at Patuxet, an Indian village emptied by disease, and survive on stored Indian food, renaming the village Plymouth.
1620
*Courtesy Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville, Ill., painting by Michael Hampshire. **Courtesy Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, N.M. (Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, 1547-77).
Average Customer Rating:
New and Old
This book satisfies on a number of levels:
Mysteries presented and solved are always compelling, almost no matter what the actual subject matter. We have plenty to follow here.
The peopling of the Americas is always a subject of interest, especially with new evidence or theories. Mann tells us of new and old theories and evidence, and even explains some of the infighting involved, although not as clearly as Dillehay and Adavasio in their recent books. Savage, some of that stuff is.
The path of European settlement in the Americas is part of our history and thus interesting and Mann tells us about the beginnings in new ways which may overturn some views.
And, to top it off, the book is well-written. Anybody who's tried to compose a clear business letter about an uncomplicated subject ought to, if he thinks about it, be overwhelmed at the effort and talent necessary to write an actual book, and write it well. As artists tell us, the most difficult thing is to make something look natural and easy.
Mann's book is beautifully written.
Some time ago, I was talking to a member of the Nature Conservancy about the effort to purchase a local area which looked to be untouched in its flora since who knows how long. The Conservancy wanted to maintain it in its pristine state. So I asked, "You want pre-Columbian or pre-human?" He laughed and called me a redneck. We both knew the issue. Pre-Columbian is good, is virtuous, is pristine and natural. That it may have been just as manufactured as some agri-business farm is to be ignored.
Whether Mann's book will accelerate discussing the issue or not--it ought to--is unknown but the book is a terrific source to start. I don't see it as a philosophical excuse for unchecked exploitation, but certainly switching from one kind of manufactured landscape to another oughtn't be characterized as some kind of Gaia-rape.
Mann's discussion of the role of disease in the episode of European settlement has a particular resonance for one particular group. There is a species of (extremely liberal) thinking which requires that the whites killed all the Indians. White guilt is maximized by this, as is the victim status of today's Indians. Victim status has a lot of benefits, only one of which is literally money in the bank.
It just will not do to have the mass death which afflicted the Indians be the result of microbes which went before the whites, by hundreds of miles and several generations, arrived in a given location. The microbes are not white, they cannot be reproached, and the germ theory of disease had not been invented so the guilt one can lay on the evil whites is limited.
We must be able to imply that all the Indians who died before their time were lined up and shot by Daniel Boone.
I have actually heard some folks bitterly opposing this part of Mann's book because it does remove most of the guilt from the whites and they hate that.
Mann gives us chapter and verse of new information on the technological advances of Indian cultures. One which particularly impressed me was the invention of a special soil for use in the rainforests, which have notably poor soil. Another is the still-mysterious invention of corn.
I am a bit skeptical of his reasoning for the lack of development of the wheel. I was unaware that the moldboard plow was so late in Europe, and Mann uses the point to say that sometimes a bunch of smart people just don't think of something. So that's what, he says, happened to the Indians and the wheel. In addition, he says there were no prospective draft animals of any use, a point made by, among others, Diamond.
Still, the Indians built huge structures in part by hauling rocks and fill on their backs. Couldn't the use of wheelbarrows have improved the efficiency of human labor? It's one thing to conceive of a big, two-axle wagon capable of hauling a ton from looking at a toy with wheels. One could understand not making the leap. It's another to simply build a toy bigger and see what happens.
While the candidates for domestication are said to be few in the Americas, I think that's a short-sighted view. I don't think anybody would want to put a buffalo in a harness. But buffalo are wild. So are/were the ancestors of domestic cattle, and not at all bovine in their temperament. Domestic cattle are domesticated because the unsuitable were eaten before they were allowed into the farmer's stock gene pool. Has anybody thought about projecting the result of trying this over, say, a thousand buffalo generations?
In sum, this book is a terrific read, has a great many new things to teach us, and will open new lines of history and anthropology. It is not perfect and does partake just a bit in the polishing up of the image of the Indian.
As a supplement, I would strongly suggest getting hold of Zinsser's old "Rats, Lice, and History" for a survey of the effect of disease on the history of the Old World.
An Uneven Book
Let's start with the book's subtitle: "New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus." The author reports on three major (and controversial) ideas in pre-Columbian studies, namely, that pre-Columbian populations in the Americas were (1) much older, (2) much larger, and (3) had a much bigger impact on the environment than people used to believe. These ideas, though, are hardly "new revelations;" they date back to the 1980's or even earlier. Readers who are already familiar with them, whether pro or con, and who are looking for a synthesis of current work in this field, may come away disappointed.
On the other hand, for the general reader, the book isn't as readable as one might hope. Like most science journalism, the book includes three kinds of writing: an explanation of the concepts involved, the author's personal anecdotes (travels and interviews with scientists), and a history of how the concepts developed over time. In the present book, this is all mixed together so indiscriminately that the reader has to change focus, rapidly and often, among the personal, the historical, and the conceptual. This is especially true of the first two thirds of the book, where this reader, at least, found himself losing patience as well as the thread of the argument. The third section, dealing with ecological impacts of the native peoples, seemed to employ a better style and a smoother flow of ideas.
The book does not mention the US Southwest or Pacific Northwest, nor does it present a connected account of the history or culture of the regions it does mention. In spite of its title, it spends a lot of time on the colonizing years _after_ 1491.
Some good things about the book are the author's competence and understanding of his subject, extensive end-notes and a useful bibliography. Given that it has achieved near-best-seller status (at least, it is a best-seller for a science journalism book), it may be that I am wrong in some of the objections I've cited, or it may be that it is one of those books destined to be purchased by many though read by few. About that, only the individual reader can decide.
great read
Engrossing, fascinating, well written. If you want a more accurate idea of what happened in this continent than what is usually told, this book is for you. What really did happen that first Thanksgiving? Gives both sides of the issues.
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DVD's
New and Old 
An Uneven Book 
